Shorts
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Were the religious books written when they say they were written?
That is the big question that’s been humming around my head for the past couple of hours. And the couple of hours’ worth of research (using all my abilities of searching as a 12 year Internet veteran) later, I’ve found nothing. There is no record of any carbon-dating, or any other process to pin-point exactly when any of the religious books were written.
This makes me question as to the “real”-ness of what they say. Speakers rattle off verses and paragraphs saying that events in history were predicted in their holy books. But if there is even a slight chance that the books weren’t written as early they’re said to have been — that they were written later — they become nothing but a log of events the author has seen happen, hence throwing their credibility completely off.
I came across talks by a Dr. Zakir Naik, who constantly quotes scripture to prove how the Qur’an must have been written/dictated by God because it predicted — at a much earlier time — everything that man discovered recently. But a quick look at the Qur’an’s wikipedia entry shows that it was allegedly written between 610 and 632 CE. Which means it’s just 1400 years old. Scientific discoveries were made 1000 to 2000 years before that.
Just as an example, the point raised by Naik about man recently discovering that the moon reflected light instead of shining of its own accord. Turns out it wasn’t that recent at all, with an
astrologerphilosopher in ~482 BCE said that the light was reflected. How about that, eh?Even if we accept the authenticity of their time …
Then of course is the vague language of the text themselves. I wanted to look at a really recent scientific discovery to see what the religious books said, to see if they predicted them before man found them. I took anti-matter, since it’s pretty new. I ran in to this site which states:
Glory be to Him Who created all the pairs: from what the earth produces and from themselves and from things unknown to them. (Qur’an, 36:36)
A quick search for “Qur’an 36:36” brings up this authorised translation of the Qur’an, in which the 36:36 line actually is [emphasis mine]:
[36:36] Glory be to the One who created all kinds of plants from the earth, as well as themselves, and other creations that they do not even know.
You can see the difference in the language there. So the Qur’an doesn’t say anything about anti-matter. It does say something about pairs, but keeps mentioning plants, and nothing else. Even if I take “plants” to understand everything that “grows”, that doesn’t explain atoms which don’t “grow”, but make everything else.
Forgetting that bit, if we look at the last line: “and other creations that they do not even know”, all I can say is conveniently vague. That line basically future proofs the book against anything man may discover at a later date. Who knows, maybe 1000 years from now, they’ll throw in a line or two about anti-matter and say that it was always there, but they just recently discovered the “lost pages” or something.
Finally, for the moment
This is definitely not the end of things. I’ll continue looking into this whenever I get the time. I want to make it clear (and state for the record) that I’m not question my own belief. I believe with all my being that there is no such thing as a God. But I want to look into this for those people who’re agnostic about the idea. Maybe if I can drum up enough resources through a long and tedious research spread over many days, I can point some agnostics this way and let them judge for themselves.
Maybe.
[I don’t want to debate the authenticity and accuracy of Wikipedia entries. I take every resource at face value. Maybe when I get more time, I’ll look into establishing credibility as well.]
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